Mission is always the first subject to be killed when a theological institution is strapped for cash and therefore for personnel. Mission is the last thing churches and pastors think about. This is a self perpetuating situation: no one thinks about it so everyone's ideas about it are inadequate, because their ideas are inadequate no one wants to be involved, because no one is involved no one gets to think about it ...
In fact David Bosch, a South African missiologist said that missiology becomes "the theological institution's 'department of foreign affairs', dealing with the exotic but at the same time peripheral" [Bosch 1991 Transforming Mission p:492]
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| Cornerstone Institute, Claremont, Cape Town |
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| Bible Institute, Kalk Bay, Cape Town |
So Martin is delighted that Cornerstone Institute, and Bible Institute both have him teaching courses on mission. Martin can be available to these colleges because Serving Strangers financial support base allows him to put in the many hours needed when they can only afford to pay a small fee.
He puts in a lot of effort - to present academically rigorous material, to demand spiritually challenging responses in assignments, and to create captivating state-of-the-art lectures.
The effect that Martin's involvement has in the lives of the students is enormously enhanced by the Serving Strangers prayer support base creating a spiritual vibrancy that would otherwise be impossible.
Martin, howdy from a long way away. We often think of you guys (like most weeks, not daily or anything spiritual like that!) but I like this page and I am really interested in doing mission where we are. I run a school. The school can't evangelise but we are called Christ the Sower, so we can do mission. In fact, if we don't do mission, we are not fulfilling what the school is there for. So we are like a church, but thankfully not one (can you imagine the problems - well, yes, you can, of course). This is where the problem comes in. How do you define mission when evangelism is off the cards? We have found tons of ways, actually (prayer spaces, worship times, learning to treat all relationships restoratively, teaching ethically - fun, this, but hard! - and using cooperative learning approaches to show that learning is for each other not for ourselves only). We root ourselves in the missiology of Tom Wright and Miroslav Volf, working for the common good, but we are just starting up taking the theology seriously. Would love to dialogue on this and renew an old friendship. If you were trying to point me in the direction of a theology that enabled a school to be mission-minded, where would you start?
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